Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824) was a German nun and mystic who was an important influence on Catholic imagination, including Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of the Christ.
She was born in a peasant family in Coesefeld, in southwestern part of the German Empire. Even as a child, she was considered serious, trustworthy and mature. She also claimed to receive private revelations from God, which she described as seeing with her heart. Her father was startled at her knowledge of the life of Jesus Christ. At the age of 21, she joined the Poor Clares order, and a few years later she moved to the Augustinian monastery Agnetenberg, in the town of Dülmen. Her relationships with other nuns were uneasy, most probably because of their jealousy of her sincere piety.
In 1811 Napoleon I disbanded all religious orders, and Emmerich had to hire a room. At this time she started to have stigmata, which persisted for about 7 years. In the same period she met the poet Clemens Brentano, who had recently converted to Catholicism. He wrote down her visions, which contained not only Jesus' life, but also ancient Biblical history, making some controversial claims such as the one that Adam and Eve spoke a variant of the proto-Indo-European language. Yet another visions contained warnings about future decline of the Church.
In 1824 Anne Catherine Emmerich died of a lung disease. She was beatified by the Pope John Paul II in 2004.